Overcoming Shame Part 2: Covering Shame with Blame and Denial

(This is Part 2 in a three part series. Read Part 1 here.)

Beeep. Beeeeep. Beeeeep. I sat up in our four-poster bed and pulled my blue phone off the bedside dresser, the black numbers—12:00AM—flashed too bright across the white screen: Why on earth is my alarm going off now?

I threw the phone back on the dresser and pulled cool sheets up to my chin. Beeeep. Beeeep. Beeeep.

I rolled over again, fingers searching dresser-top for that stupid phone! Squinting at the name flashing across blue screen, I hit the mute button. My sister. Why is she calling at midnight!?

Eyes blurry with sleep, I gazed at blue screen until the beeping silenced. But when the beeping started up a third time, I realized: Something’s wrong!

Heart pounding in my head, I hit the green button saying, “Hello?” my sister’s words flooded fast: there was an email in her inbox saying a family member was about to commit suicide.

What do we do?

Hands shaking as adrenaline pumped, I prodded Jon awake. Together we sorted out the fearful situation and responded the best we knew how. It was 3AM before we turned off the lights and pulled up the bed sheets.

But I never fell back asleep. 

The next morning, I opened the laptop and found an email from yet another family member in my inbox. I wasn’t surprised at the words that popped off the computer screen: “Please contact N______ and apologize for what you’ve done and try to help N_____ before N____ does something drastic and you regret it for the rest of your life!” Somehow—in the mind of this family member—I was to blame for the suicide attempts of a sibling I hadn’t seen or talked to in over two years.

Shifting blame—it’s one way dysfunctional families (and individuals) cover up the painful feeling of shame.  

Blame: The Shame Cover-up

 For most people, personal association with issues like mental illness, pathological lying, abuse, eating disorders, and alcoholism is shameful. Families who struggle with issues like these fear being labeled “crazy” or “messed up” and, therefore, unworthy of friendship or value. So, out of fear of being deemed “unworthy/unacceptable,” dysfunctional families work hard to keep the shameful issues hidden. If anyone dares point out or talk openly about the issues, that’s when blaming starts: “We aren’t the ones with the problem—she (the person exposing the issues) is the one who’s really messed up!”

"When we are feeling shame and fear, blame is never far behind. Sometimes we turn inward and blame ourselves. And other times we strike out and blame others. . . . When we try to get out from underneath the pain of shame and fear by blaming others, we often explode. We lash out at our child, our employee, our partner or maybe even the customer service person standing in front of us." (Brene Brown, PhD.* 23).

And the truth is this: everyone—not just members of dysfunctional families—feels shame.

Picture this scenario: it’s mid-morning on a Saturday, the kids are playing nicely in the basement (for once!), the hubby is relaxing on the couch with a book, so you decide to pop on Facebook for “just a second!” In that second, you stumble across Suzie Q’s pic of her newly decorated kitchen in her $500,000 home. Her children sit primly at the kitchen table reading books while Suzie kneads bread dough on her new granite counter tops in her size zero Lucky jeans, and the caption below this blissful snapshot reads: “Just another average day!”

As you gaze at Suszie’s pic, you begin to feel your postage stamp kitchen with thrift store décor is simply not acceptable, your kids sure don’t read as much as they should, and you remember that you still can’t fit into your size 8 jeans (never mind that baby is only 4 months old!). And, suddenly, you feel ashamed of who you are—your house, your kids, your body. But, rather than address the painful feeling of shame, you snap the laptop shut, yell at your hubby to get his “lazy butt off the couch,” and scream at your kids to “stop wasting your time and do your homework for Monday!” As you scream at hubby and kids, you indirectly blame them for your shameful feelings of inadequacy.

Sadly, I’ve been guilty of similar episodes of blaming to cover up my own shame. Ashamed of bad parenting decisions, hurtful words spoken in anger, a less-than-perfect body, house, child, life—I have lashed out at husband, children, and others. (See Part 1 of this series for an example of this with my son, Micah, here..)

Denial: The Shame Cover-up

Another method families (and individuals) use to cover up shame is outright denial of painful issues: “Problems? What problems?” And to convince themselves “our family is problem-free!” they gather for Christmas, Easter, and birthdays, smile at the camera and post “happy” pictures to Facebook, as if the photo-façade somehow proves: “We are the perfect family!”

In my dysfunctional family, denial is accomplished through simply pretending (or purposely overlooking) the family history of various forms of abuse, mental illness, pathological lying, adultery, fornication, porn addiction, and so much more. The issues are never dealt with. They are simply buried and “forgotten.” Family members frequently use phrases like this: “The past is in the past. I don’t dwell on it. I live for the good in the present,” which really means “the shame of the past is too hard to bear, so I’m just going to pretend it didn’t happen.”

But if you cover shame with denial, the dysfunction of the past never stops—the physical abuse becomes emotional, the old lies give birth to new ones, and yet another generation suffers with unresolved shame.

Biblical Origins of Shame, Blame, and Denial

Covering shame through blame and denial is nothing new—it’s the Garden Story repeated in the Now. Adam and Eve felt guilt over their apple-stealing disobedience and this guilt led to feeling naked—ashamed. Afraid of God discovering their disobedience and shame, they hid. Then, when God found and confronted them, they refused to take responsibility for their actions; instead, Eve blamed the serpent and Adam blamed Eve.

"In an attempt to ward off shame’s grip, often a person (or institution or nation) will project blame on another. The perfect control model doesn’t work, life’s imperfections and insecurities are disturbing, so blaming and scapegoating are enlisted, giving an illusion of control." (Kathleen Curzie Gajdos PhD, emphasis mine).

Control—the root motive for blame and denial.

Adam and Eve attempted to control God and cover up their shameful disobedience by blaming the serpent and each other. And, just like Adam and Eve, all of humanity is guilty of trying to control people and circumstances to avoid dealing with shame. We surround ourselves with people who tell us we are “beautiful, amazing, and right-about-everything.” We set up strict rules for our kids so they turn out “great” and make us look good. But the sad reality is this: “the control model doesn’t work.” Eventually your kids make poor choices, a good friend talks about you behind your back, your husband betrays you or you betray your husband, and deep down you feel unacceptable—shameful.  

So, how do you truly overcome Shame and view yourself as God sees you--worthy and acceptable in spite of your imperfections?

For me, the first step in dealing with shame was admitting how shame characterized virtually every aspect of my upbringing and how I repeated those family patterns in my own life. But simply seeing and understanding shame in family/self was not enough to overcome the shame woven deeply in my psyche.

Only through truly embracing the power of the Gospel have I been able to address the deep roots of shame.

Read Part 3 here.

*Brene Brown, PhD. in her book I Thought It Was Just Me (But it isn’t.)

*Kathleen Curzie Gajdos PhD. in her article “Mind Matters—Guilt and Shame.”

Overcoming Shame Part 1: What is Shame?

“We do not talk about shame. We experience it, we feel it, we sometimes live with it for an entire lifetime, but we don’t talk about it.”

(Brene Brown PhD.)

 

I stood on brown linoleum in the parsonage kitchen in Illinois. The red-check curtains over the chrome sink on the far side of the room fluttered in the summer breeze as Mom leaned over a pile of dirty dishes. I planted bare, dirty toes on linoleum squares, crossed nine-year-old arms across my sleeveless shirt and pleaded at Mom’s backside, “Mom!. . .  Mom!” Her stonewashed jeans brushed the counter as she wiped pewter plates in the kitchen sink with Palmolive bubbles and rinsed each plate under water. One plate—wash, rinse, slide into dry rack. Two. Three . . .

“Mom!” I pleaded again.

“What?” she sputtered without turning from sudsy plate in hand.

“Mom, listen to me! It really hurt my feelings when you said that about me in front of everybody. It wasn’t nice, what you said.”

Water dripping from plate, shoulders arrow straight, Mom sing-songed: “Nobody loves you, everybody hates you, guess you better go eat worms!”

Plate in one hand, Mom pulled a holey dishrag off bare counter saying,

“Becky, just get over it! Stop your whining!”

With Mom’s sarcastic song echoing in my brain, I felt weak, exposed, like I was some kind of big baby. Tears welled, but I willed them back. I didn’t know how to respond to Mom’s sarcastic song.

So, I said nothing.

And in that dish-washing, song-chanting episode, I felt shame—like I was a bad person for feeling hurt.  

As a kid I understood guilt—that bad feeling you get when you lie or call your sister a “brat!” But shame? What was that?

Then, twenty-some years later, when my five-year-old son Micah stood on my brown kitchen tile crying crystal tears and saying, “You hurt my feelings!” I remember how I knee-jerk sang Mom’s song, “Nobody loves me, everybody hates me. . .” and as I sang, I felt like mean-mom and the song died on my lips.

That night I talked to Jon about singing Mom’s song to Micah, how it felt wrong, but I didn’t know why. Jon said: “Because you invalidated Micah’s feelings by making fun of them.” That made sense to me—the invalidation part.  But what I didn’t understand back then is that song stemmed from a deep well of SHAME I didn’t know existed.

Edward Welch Mdiv, PhD, defines shame as: “the deep sense that you are unacceptable because of something you did, something done to you, or something associated with you. You feel exposed and humiliated . . . . Guilt can be hidden; shame feels like it is always exposed” (Shame Interrupted, 2, emphasis mine).

In the first few years of motherhood, I found myself repeating the shame-based parenting habits of Mom and Dad. Just like my parents, I felt unacceptable and unworthy, and to cover those uncomfortable feelings, I denied them or projected them onto my children, husband, and others.

When Micah expressed, “You hurt my feelings!” I felt like a Mom-failure, like I didn’t measure up, like I wasn’t acceptable. But, rather than acknowledge my feelings of shame, I made fun of my son, shamed him instead.

The truth is, every parent, every human, feels shame. This battle with shame began in the garden. After Adam and Eve disobeyed God, they felt guilty, but they also felt naked—ashamed—for the first time “And [Adam] said, ‘I heard the sound of you [God] in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself” (Genesis 3:10, emphasis mine).

Just like Adam and Eve, when we feel shame—because of something we did or that was done to us—we go into hiding. Adam and Eve covered their naked shame with clothes, we cover our shame with denial: “I never did/said that!” or “No, I was never abused/hurt/mistreated!” or “The past is in the past. I don’t dwell on it!”  We also cover shame through blaming others for our shameful feelings or actions: “I’ve dealt with my issues. You are the one who just can’t get over it!”

So, through denial and blaming—we protect our shame, grow it, and hurt our friends, spouses, children . . . .

This post is Part 1 of three posts on the topic of shame. Read Part 2 here. and Part 3 here.